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Interesting. A very common, analogous fact pattern is when a new salaried employee is scheduled to start work on New Year's Day (or any other non-workday), and that employee does not show up for work until January 3rd. The employee does not perform an hour of service until January 3rd but is compensated as if they started on January 1st. Some plans will say this employee's date of hire is January 1st and the employee's initial eligibility computation period starts on January 1st. Other plans will say this employee's first eligibility computation period starts on January 3rd. In the OP, the time period is significantly later but the other facts are essentially the same. It is worth noting that doctors are not described as shareholders or owners, so these doctors will be considered as NHCEs regardless of how much compensation they earn in their first calendar year of employment, so there is not discriminatory. It will be interesting hear from our BL colleagues how relevant the time period is in this situation to determining if there is only one possible determination of the date of hire, or if the plan administrator can choose the designate either July 1st or first day worked is the date of hire for purposes of determining the start or the doctors' first eligibility period.

I've started to work with a complex ownership situation and am looking for guidance. A control group exists and within that group, there is one employer with mutliple entities and 3 different plans, so a smaller control group within the larger control group. I believe that this smaller group has to be tested on its own and then within the larger group. Is this accurate? Thanks for any guidance or reference sites.

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It is hard to guess what is their motivation. The owner's logic may be similar to someone who has excessive tax withholding during the year because they like getting a big refund when they file their taxes. This owner at least gets a little bit of earnings included in the refund while the IRS doesn't provide earnings on a refund of excess withholding. Maybe, the owner treats the family to a Disney vacation every year after the refund check arrives and the owner doesn't want to break the tradition.

You are correct, terminated employees do not need a top heavy contribution, provided their termination date is before the end of the plan year for the year in question. In other words: Top Heavy: Not eligible, terminated Profit sharing, match, any other contributions: If allocation conditions exclude terminated employees (as most profit sharing does), no allocation required. If a contribution type lacks exclusions for terminated employees, this employee would still need a contribution (assuming they met any other eligibility & allocation conditions). In such a case, the compensation used for the allocation would either include or exclude severance compensation depending on the type of compensation & the plan document provisions.

Right, but technically the participant isn't employed on the last day of the Plan Year so they shouldn't get the Top Heavy contribution. I'm problably overthinking this though

Dave, It works fine and I’ll update my icon/link. I did really like the button she had at the top to choose how many years or what years to show. But this will still be a time saver. I really appreciate y’all taking it on and Ms @Carol V. Calhoun for being gracious enough to allow it.

The two answer above by Pam & Bri are both good places to look. Unfortunately, Relius is a very complex beast & I feel your pain on the highly unhelpful error messages; it's one of the biggest reasons my firm is moving away from Relius this year. In regards to Bri's answer, if you go to plan specs > source summary and click the magic hat button (thanks for the clear labeling FIS), you can generate accounts. By selecting all sources & all investments, you can make sure your plan has an account for every investment-source pair. If your plan has certain more complex provisions relating to source-specific investments, just be careful using this tool. Per Pam's answer, make sure this is done for any relevant plan years. Hope this helps!

"Trailing" post-severance compensation that meets the 2 1/2 month rule is included. Other forms of post-severance compensation (unused leave cashouts, certain nonqualified deferred compensation, salary continuation for disabled participants or military members, etc.) are all governed by the plan document, so you'll have to refer to your specific plan. Our plan documents made through ASC default to include post-severance compensation, with the ability to exclude the various types above. Not legal advice, YMMV

We have a client who has an employee who is only receiving severance payments and no other salary. I just wanted to confirm that all of that compensation is ignored, and therefore they wouldn't get any type of contribution (Profit Sharing, obviously not since they are under 1,000 hours, but a Top Heavy contribution was my only thinking). Thanks in advance.

I doubt it. Not a CPA, but I can think of very little advantage to what you describe. If it happens YoY, they're really just kicking taxes down in a cascading way, not gaining much of an advantage. In fact, they're likely losing out. I don't know how much a safe harbor contribution would cost them, or how much of it would go to HCEs / owners, but the tax savings of a) the safe harbor allocation itself and b) the fact that HCEs could defer another $15,000 (or more) combined annually means they're likely losing a pretty significant tax advantage by not doing safe harbor. I do plan design & work with sponsors fairly often, and honestly there's just always some that will refuse to design a plan in the way that makes sense. Some don't want to be safe harbor because they see employer contributions as "giving money away" and they don't want to do that, even when you break down the numbers of how it actually saves them money overall. Some also just simply don't like being told what to do or what their plan should be. I've had prospects come to us who would benefit significantly by being a SH Non-elective instead of their current safe harbor match; they do new comparability profit sharing every year and have to make a full 5% gateway contribution on top of their safe harbor. Non-elective would save a huge chunk of money for a company that wants to max out its owners, but they came looking to offer match and are set on sticking with it.

That's a more recent version, but yup!

Treas. Reg. §1.410(a)-7(a)(3)(ii): Employment commencement date reads While 1.410(a)-7 is, in general, about the elapsed time method in particular, this section states "in order to credit service accurately under any service crediting method". Unless there's precedent out there otherwise, I would assume using the date they actually started working would be defensible under the above definitions, as they never worked an hour of service prior to that. YMMV, Not legal advice, etc etc.

Just a thought... show a larger portion of the In-Service distribution being made from his match account rather than his deferral account. This would leave a sufficient balance to make the corrections. It would seem that the only issue is if his deferrals were all Roth.

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@Bill Presson Bill, how does this new page work for you on your iPhone? https://benefitslink.com/limits.html

@Bri This one? https://benefitsattorney.com/charts/appfa/

Ta-da, now on BenefitsLink (with Carol's consent): Inflation-Adjusted Limits on Retirement Plans, Including Maximum Benefits and Contributions (1996-Present)

A large group of doctors has several doctors in their census with DOH 7/1/2024 which makes them eligible 7/1/2025 in accordance with the plan document. This was on the census file uploaded to the record keeping platform who determines eligibility. They are eligible then for SH, PS and DB. Now the plan sponsor says they didn't actually start working until mid-August and therefore should enter 1/1/2026. These doctors make the max in 6 months and so the employer contribution is large - they maximize the K plan with SH/PS. My approach - plan sponsor we rely on you. Tell us their DOH. I don't know if the IRS has a position on this. I advised them to keep the DOE as 7/1/2025 as that may be the expectation of these recent hires. Thoughts? Thank you

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Owner of a 401(k) plan with over 20 ee's fails ADP Test every year. They refuse to set up a Safe Harbor plan and annually takes about $15,000 in excess contributions returned to them. I just started wondering if this is some kind of tax strategy on their part to delay some taxes? Anyone ever seen that?

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Person B's input isn't required, in fact some divorce agreements will specifically make drafting and filing a DRO the responsibility of a particular party so that the other party doesn't have to deal with it. The plan literally CANNOT make a DRO qualified until AFTER its been filed with the court. So either these are wrong, or out of order. Person B's signature is not required keep track in writing or every written request and response for the information. This is something to hope EBSA can help with. I don't know what this means. Are they asking Person B to sign something? asking them to take money out of the plan? There isn't anything for an alternate payee to accept or reject. If they think the DRO was written wrong that is typically something for them and their lawyer to work out with the other person's lawyer. Not the plan. I don't think this means what you think it means. for a DRO to be qualified - it literally just means that it has the appropriate information mandated by federal law, such as being able to identify the people involved, the plan involved, that the award isn't in a form that the plan doesn't allow etc. Qualified doesn't mean the order has a money split that is the same as what the parties agreed upon.